OpenZCine
The open field monitor for Nikon Z.
Pro monitoring scopes, playback, full camera control, and Camera-to-Cloud export with LUT baking.
Free and open source.
Website · Docs · Roadmap · Report a bug
Supported cameras
| Camera | Live view | Camera control | Notes |
|---|
| Nikon ZR | ✅ | ✅ | Primary hardware target. Current development and testing center on it. |
| Nikon Z9 | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Nikon Z5II | ✅ | ✅ | |
| Nikon Z6, Z6II, Z6III, Zf, Z8, Z7, Z7II | ❔ | ❔ | Not yet tested on the camera. |
✅ working · ❔ untested.
[!WARNING]
The camera protocol is implemented from public sources and can be incomplete on bodies that have
not been tested yet. Check that recording starts and stops on the camera body until you trust the
link.
Features
- Read the image like a colorist. Waveform, RGB parade, histogram, and vectorscope run live
beside the image you are judging.
- Catch exposure and focus before the take. Codec-aware false color, zebras, RED-inspired
Traffic Lights, and industry-standard focus peaking work directly on the monitor feed.
- Frame once for every delivery. Stack multiple aspect markers, custom frames, grids,
crosshairs, level, and de-squeeze without losing sight of the shot.
- Set the camera without touching the camera. Control ISO, shutter angle, iris, white balance,
recording format, frame rate, autofocus behavior, and recording from the device on your rig.
- Stay connected. Resilient Wi-Fi discovery, pairing, saved-camera profiles, and automatic
reconnect, with a USB-C tethered transport alongside the primary Wi-Fi workflow.
- Review before striking the set. Browse clips, scrub playback, check scopes and markers, and
preview the selected look on-device.
- Ship it with the look baked in. Apply built-in, RED, or custom
.cube LUTs during export,
then send through platform-native sharing or directly to Frame.io.
- Keep genuine camera timecode. Monitor and multicam readouts preserve the camera-header
frame counter as
HH:MM:SS:FF when reported; no frame clock or rate is generated by the app.
- Keep the monitor on your wrist. Apple Watch and Wear OS companions mirror the live feed with
its LUT, camera status, timecode, and remote record control.
iPhone, iPad, and Android phones share the monitor, assists, camera control, playback, and export,
with adaptive live-view thermal management during long sessions and recording. Nikon ZR is the
primary hardware target today. USB-C transport, both wearable companions, Bluetooth shutter
integration, and wider phone and tablet coverage continue to be hardened with real-world testing.
See it in action
Install
[!NOTE]
A sideload APK and a Google Play install are signed differently and cannot update each other.
Remove the Play or APK-mirror copy before installing the APK.
Pairing and live view need a real Nikon Z camera nearby. Guides for both apps are in the
docs.
Roadmap
The roadmap lives in GitHub Discussions,
where every proposed feature has its own thread. Browse the
Ideas category
to vote, add production context, or propose what to tackle next. Roadmap threads describe
direction, not promised dates. Current engineering status is visible on the read-only
OpenZCine Kaneo board, and
engineering-phase detail lives in docs/ROADMAP.md.
Free. Open source. Yours
No subscriptions, no paywalls, no advertising, and no telemetry.
OpenZCine is Apache-2.0 licensed and deliberately, transparently built in public with Claude Code
and Codex, so filmmakers and developers can inspect, improve and adapt the tool they rely on.
Engineering guidelines live in AGENTS.md.
For developers
Built with
Architecture
A shared Swift business and protocol core with native platform shells:
| Layer | Path | Purpose |
|---|
| Shared core | Sources/OpenZCineCore/ | PTP-IP protocol, camera state, Nikon property codes, discovery, pairing |
| iOS app | ios/ | SwiftUI shell, Bonjour discovery, live-view rendering, camera I/O |
| Android app | Apps/Android/app/ | Jetpack Compose phone shell and Android platform adapters |
| Android facade | Sources/OpenZCineAndroidFacade/ | Swift session and JNI boundary for Android |
| Wear OS | Apps/Android/wear/, Apps/Android/wear-relay/ | Wear UI and phone-mediated relay |
| Tests | Tests/OpenZCineCoreTests/ | Swift package tests: packet encoding, property parsing, discovery, layout |
| Prototype | reference/flutter-prototype/ | Archived Flutter reference, not part of production CI |
The shared core owns protocol logic and stays portable (no SwiftUI, UIKit or Android
dependencies). Platform shells own sockets, permissions, lifecycle, rendering and UI. See
docs/ARCHITECTURE.md and the
architecture decision.
Build from source
Tooling runs through just:
just setup # install meta-check tools (macOS / Homebrew)
just # list all recipes
just check # run repository quality checks
just format # format Swift sources
just test # run Swift package tests
just native-check # run Swift tests, then build and test the native iOS app
just android-build # build the Android app and staged Swift runtime
just android-check # build, test, compile device tests, and lint Android
just android-release-check # verify the signed phone/Wear release pair
just bug-relay-check # test the standalone anonymous bug-report relay
The iOS Xcode project is checked in:
open ios/Runner.xcodeproj
[!TIP]
Most of the app works without a camera: add ZC_DEMO_AUTOSTART=1 to the Runner scheme's
environment for a demo live-view session (see CONTRIBUTING.md). Pairing and
live view need a real Nikon Z camera.
Releases: TestFlight builds come from Xcode Cloud, with a GitHub Actions fallback
(docs/testflight-ci.md). Play testing and the sideload APK are in
docs/android-distribution.md.
Documentation
OpenZCine went through an extended private R&D phase before publication; the public repository
starts from a clean slate with a squashed initial commit rather than carrying the experimental
history along.
Contributing
Contributions are welcome.
- Read
CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow, code standards, and how
to report bugs vs. request features.
- Report a Problem (iOS and Android) is the problem report form shared with OpenPocketCine: it
sends your description, an optional reply email, technical details only if you include them, and
photos privately to OpenCapture through Sentry. Automatic error reports are a separate opt-in,
off by default. Neither app calls the anonymous relay in
services/bug-relay any more.
- Ideas and questions go in GitHub Discussions (an account is required):
Ideas and
Q&A.
- Standardized labels help triage work; see
.github/labels.yml.
- Please read the
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. For security issues, see
SECURITY.md.
Support
I truly appreciate everyone who uses this project, files an issue, or sends a patch. Optional
Buy Me a Coffee contributions help keep the lights on. If
you would rather give to a charity, especially one that helps animals, that is just as welcome.
Credits
The R3D NE Monitor built-in look was contributed by Wang Yuehua and ships with permission,
credited in the app's LUT picker beside the look itself. Nikon PTP/MTP property and operation codes
were cross-checked against the libgphoto2 project's public protocol tables; no libgphoto2 source is
included. Details for both are in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.
License
Apache 2.0. Third-party licenses are listed in
THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. The app's privacy policy lives at
opencapture.org/openzcine/privacy.
This project is not affiliated with Nikon. No vendor SDK or proprietary Nikon documentation is
included in, distributed with, or required by this project. The camera protocol is implemented
from public sources; see docs/nikon-sdk.md.
"Nikon", "Nikon Z", "ZR", and "Z Cinema" are trademarks of Nikon Corporation, used here for
identification only.
